A cool story about French immersion in New York City schools

A Big Advocate of French in New York’s Schools: France

From left, Liam Kelly, Anju Andren and Hudson Wong, students in a dual-language program at Public School 58 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.CreditKirsten Luce for The New York Times

In the fugue of tongues on New York’s streets, French has never been a dominant voice. And as surging numbers of Asian and Latino immigrants continue to tip the balance of foreign languages toward Chinese and Spanish, the idea of learning French, to some, may seem kind of quaint, even anachronistic.

Yet in the city’s public school system, the French dual-language program, in which half the classes are in French and the other half in English, is booming. Eight public schools offer a French/English curriculum for about 1,000 students, making it the third-largest dual-language program, after Spanish and Chinese. And demand continues to grow, with two more schools scheduled to join this year and at least seven groups of parents in different areas of the city lobbying their schools to participate.